An ambitious project out of Europe aims to release what could be the most sustainable battery yet — using lignin, a natural substance found in trees, reported Interesting Engineering.
Stora Enso, a forest industry and renewable products company headquartered in Finland, produces a lignin-based battery alternative called Lignode. The company has partnered with innovative Swedish battery developer Altris for this initiative.
The inventive energy storage method, if successful, could provide a sustainable substitute for a component in widely used lithium batteries.
Lithium batteries are, per Interesting Engineering, "the most energy-dense solutions we have" — referring to options that are widely available. We rely on lithium batteries to power our phones, tablets, and laptops, as Apple indicates. These batteries are also critical to the alternative energy movement, including for electric vehicles (EVs), solar power, and wind farms. "There is an increased demand for solutions that can store excess energy generated on sunny or windy days," Interesting Engineering added.
But with lithium batteries, every positive has a negative. A significant amount of carbon pollution is released into the atmosphere during lithium battery production, wrote the Institute for Energy Research (IER).
One key component of the batteries is graphite, largely supplied by China, making other countries "completely depend[ent] on China to secure their energy transition," noted Interesting Engineering.
China "gets almost 60% of its electricity from coal," IER stated. Burning coal for power creates toxic pollution that can cause extreme weather events and harm plants, animals (according to the EPA), the economy (as Airly explains), and our health. Plus, lithium batteries often end up in landfills, where they may "release toxins, including heavy metals that can leak into the soil and groundwater," according to IER.
All of these concerns are driving the demand for more eco-friendly energy storage. That's where the Stora Enso and Altris collaboration comes in. Lignin, as Interesting Engineering reported, is a "naturally occurring polymer [that] makes up [as much as] 30 percent of a tree and is abundantly available."
The "bio-based" material includes carbon in its composition, making it an eligible stand-in for the graphite used to create anodes (battery parts involved in receiving or releasing ions during charge and discharge) in lithium and sodium batteries. Sodium-ion batteries are "inherently sustainable and easy to recycle," per battery developer Altris.
"With Lignode having the potential to become the most sustainable anode material in the world, this partnership with Altris aligns perfectly with our common commitment to support the ambition on more sustainable electrification," said Juuso Konttinen, Stora Enso's Senior Vice President & Head of Biomaterials Growth, in the Interesting Engineering report.
Because lignin is "an existing byproduct in the production of pulp," noted Stora Enso on its website, the anode is made as part of a circular process: "Here we are actually turning a side stream into a valuable resource."
The companies will continue to work on the project for the next few years. It is exciting with its potential to simultaneously reduce air pollution, limit toxic landfill waste, enable smoother clean energy initiatives, and encourage businesses to use accessible, affordable, natural materials in mainstream products.
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